democracy
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Rendering Unto the Judiciary
Justice Martineau’s recent article on judicial courage Continue reading
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Moving Dunsmuir past Dunsmuir
Democratic accountability for privative clauses, and its consequences for the standard of review analysis Continue reading
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Squaring the Public Law Circle
Canadian administrative lawyers keep trying to reconcile parliamentary sovereignty and the Rule of Law; they shouldn’t bother Continue reading
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Crashing the Party
Andrew Coyne says we should re-think how we choose party leaders. So here are my thoughts. Continue reading
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Constraint and Candour
The case for a constrained judiciary ― but also candour about adjudication At the website of Advocates for the Rule of Law (ARL), Asher Honickman has posted a reply to my post here on “How to Do Constitutional Adjudication” (which was itself a reply to some of his arguments in a previous ARL essay making “The Continue reading
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Yes Or No?
Post-Brexit thoughts on referenda, especially in the context of electoral reform In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, there is renewed debate about the lessons, if any, that it might hold for other democratic polities on the use of the referendum generally, and in particular for Canada about an eventual referendum on electoral reform. Many Continue reading
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Ideas of the Marketplace II
What we can learn from thinking about the marketplace of ideas as a market In a very interesting post over at EconLog, Bryan Caplan considers what he describes as the “dogmatic libertarian” claim that all markets work well, as it is applies ― or, rather, doesn’t apply ― to the marketplace of ideas. The marketplace seems Continue reading
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The Core of the Case against Electoral Reform
Why the concerns of those who want electoral reform do not move me When I wrote about the constitutionality of electoral reform, I did not want to discuss its merits, beyond saying that I did not believe it had many, or the process by which it should be determined upon, beyond saying I favoured a Continue reading
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Acting Like Grown-Ups
Is there a point to legislating when judges can do it for us? I would like to elaborate on a point I made in my last post, which discussed arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday about whether the suspension of the declaration of unconstitutionality of the across-the-board criminalization of assisted suicide should be extended. Continue reading
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It Won’t Help
This is yet another post on the duty to vote. Here, I address arguments according to we have such a duty because if everyone votes, the quality of election campaigns and, possibly, of governance, will be better than under the current state of affairs, where some people vote, and others do not. This argument, like Continue reading
Double Aspect 